SALEM – A walk through the Kettle Brand potato chips factory is an olfactory experience.

The raw room, where 500,000 pounds of potatoes are processed each day, smells of wet earth.

Move on to the fryers, and your nose recognizes the hot, greasy smell of a fast food meal. At the flavor drums, invisible particles of powdered cheese and salty barbecue flavor waft through the air and into your olfactory glands.

It's hard to believe this maze of machinery is required to make something as simple as a sliced and fried potato. But a company churning out hundreds of thousands of bags per day needs considerably more than a slicing knife and a vat of vegetable oil.

These industrial-sized slicers can tackle 300 pounds of potatoes in one swipe. The fryers are the size of an athlete's ice tub. Salt is sprinkled on using a sprayer drum as big as a wine barrel.

A local brand

When I told a friend I was going on a tour of the Kettle Brand chip factory, she responded, "Kettle Chips are made in Oregon?"

Then she proceeded to tell me that whenever the addictively crunchy fried potatoes go on sale, she buys multiple bags of the salt and vinegar flavor.

Kettle brand was born in Salem in 1978, as a purveyor of gourmet nuts. Founder Cameron Healy and his friends sold their wares from the back of a big white van long before the Salem factory existed.

The friends didn't foray into chips until 1982, but the distinctively crunchy, thick chips that result from the batch-cooked process became a hit with the natural foods crowd. Today, the Salem factory processes 500,000 pounds of potatoes daily. Plants in Wisconsin and England serve the company's East Coast and overseas customers. No longer just a health store junk food staple, the chips occupy kitchen shelves of dreadlocked hippies and suburban moms alike.

Though it's not the only Oregon-based chip company, Kettle far outsells any other local brand, and is ranked eighth nationally in potato chip sales.

Why do Oregonians love Kettle in so much? Chris Clark, vice president of operations and membership at the Snack Food Association, says nostalgia plays a part. So does the appeal of a local brand with a commitment to all-natural, non-GMO ingredients, Clark says.

At the zero-waste Salem factory, solar panels gleam atop the roof. Workers tend to community garden plots and take lunch breaks along a restored creek bank. "There is something to be said for what is perceived as a unique, artisan product," he says.

And, all brands of kettle-cooked chips have seen sales growth in recent years.

View full sizeAfter being coated with powdered flavoring in a large spinning drum, chips are dropped into recepticles where they are portioned by weight.Courtesy of Kettle Brand

Playing with flavor

For the first century of the potato chip's history, salted was about as exotic as it got. Since Joe Murphy's invention of barbecue, salt & vinegar and cheese & onion chips in 1954, chipmakers have been on an endless quest to create the next big flavor craze.

How do all those tastes get made? It's a surprisingly complex process.

Flavor architect Carolyn Ottenheimer leads a team of developers responsible for spotting tastes that might translate well into powdered form.

"I got smacked on my honeymoon because I did a store check," he says. "We take our filter off and don't even worry if it's going to be on the chip yet."

Then, they start scheming. Say developers want to make a chip that tastes like peanut satay sauce, a flavor not in the current Kettle line (though Ottenheimer says the team has experimented with just about everything).

A member of the team would be charged with finding as many products as possible that contain satay flavoring. That could mean skewers from the local Thai restaurant, jars of store-bought satay sauce, and instant ramen noodles with satay flavoring. He or she might even buy some peanut butter, soy sauce, tamarind paste and fish sauce to deconstruct the flavors.

Next, the team holds a tasting session. The products are set out on a table along with "blank" unseasoned, unsalted potato chips and straws for dipping and tasting.

As they sample the products, tasters describe flavors using specific language. They'll identify what they like and dislike, and attempt to arrive at a taste they hope to mimic with their chip.

"We use actual grocery references to get us all on the same page," says Becky Andersen, a research and development manager for Kettle.

Chemists at another company do the rest, searching for the right powder combinations to give the chip the desired flavor. In Kettle's case, all ingredients must be natural and, if possible, must come from non-GMO sources.

The formula is typically passed back and forth dozens of times between the chemists and Kettle's team as they tweak it to perfection.

It doesn't always work. Case in point: The time the team tried to make a guacamole flavored chip.

"It tasted more like dirt," Ottenheimer says. "To create a flavor profile that's all natural, there are some things that don't work."

T.G.I. Friday's, Nathan's Famous and Lay's recently unveiled bacon-flavored snacks, according to the Snack Food Assocation's 2013 State of the Industry Report. But going the sweet route is a gamble, considering the recent backlash Pringles suffered after unveiling a line of chips featuring white chocolate peppermint, pumpkin spice and cinnamon sugar flavors.

McCullagh said he wasn't dissuaded by Pringles' failure.

"My friends on Facebook are clamoring for it," he says.

The chips are hitting shelves now, and will be widely available by the end of summer. It's too early to gauge how consumers are responding.

What's next? Ottenheimer isn't telling. Clark, the industry expert, can spot a general trend. Ethnic flavors, from masala to wasabi, will continue to influence flavor magicians.

Win or lose, new flavor flops or triumphs won't drastically tip the company's balance sheets. Despite a growing list of options, from chicken and waffles to maple and bacon, the old standby salted potato chip still far outsells all other flavors industrywide.